Create Loyal Customers with Service Recovery

Hi I’m John Tschohl, president of Service Quality Institute. I’d like to talk to you about a program I have called “Loyal for Life.” It’s a one session program implemented in one session of 3 to 4 hours each. It teaches service recovery. I believe that in your business and my business every day, or at least every week, we screw up. Bad things happen. Things blow up in our face. We make mistakes. To just say, “I’m sorry,” is good customer service. Service recovery is when you go a step further. I teach four steps in Loyal for Life. Number one, is act quickly.

When you screw up, something doesn’t work out, the customer is angry, you obviously made a mistake or your employee made a mistake, just act quickly.

Number two, take responsibility. Just say, “Obviously, we did not ship it on Tuesday, as promised. It’s all our fault.” Now, you got to be careful. When you say that, somebody might have a heart attack and die, right on the spot, because they’ve never heard an employee say, “I made a mistake.”

Third is you want to be empowered. You want the employee to make a very fast, empowered decision not to say, “Let me find my boss. Let me find somebody else.” No, just make a fast decision in favor of the customer.

Fourth, what are the products or services that you have in your organization that have value? That have low cost that you can give away?

For example, in our business, when we screw up, we could throw in a free leader’s guide. We could throw in some participant materials. We could throw in a video or two. I mean, the real cost is very low, but it’s called, “Service recovery.”

Whatever your business is, you have products and services that have very high value and low cost. When you move quickly with service recovery, it makes an impact.

In addition to the video, you have a participant book that is used through the session. Everybody gets a copy of the book that they use.

They read throughout the session. It’s very easy reading. Lots of white space. It’s all giving them the skills and techniques that they can use.

Then, participant kit has a certificate of completion that each employee gets and technique card to reinforce the message.

Then, we have a leader’s guide that’s both user friendly and idiot proof that you or somebody in your organization, would use. For example, if you want to program, it would tell you the time of the session.

What you need to know to read it, to get ready, and then you got to be able to follow the scripts that are in here.

When it says, “Turn on the video,” you have to have the skill to be able to push the button. When the script says, “Turn it off,” and when the video says, “Turn it off,” you have to be able to push the button again.

It’s a one session program. Easy to use. The purpose is to keep customers. In your business, my business, we all make mistakes.

How do we save our soul? How do we take a customer from Hell, and move them within 60 seconds, they think they are dealing with the greatest company in the world. That’s what “Loyal for Life,” is all about.

I hope you take a look at it. We have an introductory special package that you can leverage and use. The program absolutely works. I’m John Tschohl, thank you.